Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener are New York-based dance artists. Their work involves the building of collaborative worlds through improvisational techniques, digital technologies, and material construction. They met as dancers in the Merce Cunningham Dance company and since 2010 they have created over 25 multidisciplinary dance works including site-responsive installations, concert dances, gallery performances and dances for film in venues such as the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Barbican Centre, REDCAT, The Walker Art Center, and MoMA/PS1. Throughout they have maintained a commitment to queer culture and aesthetics. Their partnership intentionally blurs authorship and maintains a deep commitment to collaboration with a diverse community of dancers, performers, artists and cultural institutions.
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Get Into It
Get Thee to the LIbrary
Recommended readings to get you in gear for the show.
Re’al Christian, Carin Kuoni, Eriola Pira, editors. As For Protocols. Amherst College Press, 2025.
Iris Julian. Singular plural ways of staging together: Perspectives on contemporary dance, art performance and visual art. Bieilefeld, 2024.
Michael Johnson, Felicity Healey-Benson, Catherine Adams, Nina Bonder Dohn, Phenomenology in Action for Researching Networked Learning. Springer, 2024.
Stephan Koplowitz, On Site: Methods for Site-Specific Performance Creation. Oxford University Press, 2022.
Ben Spatz, Blue Sky Body: Thresholds for Embodied Research. Routledge, 2020.
Read All About It
SFMOMA | 2019
Already & Not Yet: Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener in Conversation with Claudia La Rocco
“The throughline is always that we’re trying to be exactly where we are.”
Walker Art | 2017
Camera as Body: An Interview with Charles Atlas, Rashaun Mitchell, and Silas Riener
“The camera is a dancer rather than a distant observer.”
Flaunt | 2016
Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Renner Reveal Their Inner Workings
“There is one set of tasks I gave to myself that I still don’t fully understand.”
Gagosian Quarterly | 2021
RASHAUN MITCHELL + SILAS RIENER
“I love building the work out of the fabric of secrets.”
New York Times | 2017
Outdoor Stages: Dance in the Park, Where You Can’t Hide Behind a Tree
“We’ve done a lot of work outside, but this felt more vulnerable.”
Brooklyn Rail | Dec 2011
In Conversation: SILAS RIENER and RASHAUN MITCHELL with Claudia La Rocco
“I’m ready to move differently.”
Flashback
Rashaun Mitchell was last at NYU Skirball for the Cunningham Centennial in 2019. Take a look at his conversation with Nancy Dalva.